Crespi d’Adda after 125 years is changing: Italy’s most famous workers’ village becomes a cultural hub

Crespi d’Adda, the celebrated late 19th-century workers’ village, will mark 30 years since its recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site on December 5, 2025. Founded as a settlement for the employees of Cristoforo Crespi’s cotton mill, the village has remained almost untouched since its creation — the upcoming regeneration will be the first major transformation in 125 years of history.

Domus once described Crespi d’Adda as a place suspended in time: a village built seemingly from nothing, on one of the most challenging plots of land in the Bergamo area, with the cotton mill as its beating heart. Conceived by industrialist Cristoforo Crespi for his workers, the village integrated housing, collective services, the owner’s villa, and the cemetery — offering a unique testimony of industrial and social life at the time, as well as a precedent for later utopian workers’ settlements by Italian entrepreneurs, such as Adriano Olivetti’s Ivrea designed by Cesare Cattaneo.

The regeneration will begin in 2026, focusing primarily on the cotton mill, which closed in 2003 and has since been awaiting a new public purpose. The intervention will be carried out by a team of architects and urban planners selected by the Municipality and the Superintendency, aiming to transform the former factory into a multifunctional center with cultural venues, exhibition areas, workshops, and community spaces. The workers’ houses — symbols of the village and of a certain idea of equality among laborers — will be preserved and enhanced for residential and social use, preventing Crespi d’Adda from turning into a ghost town. The village’s urban layout will remain intact: the residential zone to the east, the public service core in the center, and the industrial area to the west, with the iconic cypress-lined avenue leading to the workers’ cemetery and the owner’s villa.

The plan has taken shape thanks to an agreement between the Lombardy Region, the Province of Bergamo, the Municipality of Capriate San Gervasio, and the company Odissea S.r.l. — a holding linked to the Percassi Group, active internationally in the fashion retail and e-commerce sectors — which has acquired the former cotton mill. According to local newspaper L’Eco di Bergamo, private investments could amount to hundreds of millions of euros in the long term. Meanwhile, in July, the Lombardy Region allocated €50,000 for the restoration of the village’s historic washhouse, designed by engineer Pietro Brunati, who collaborated at the end of the 19th century with architect Ernesto Pirovano on the original layout of the site.

Opening image: Photo andrea from Adobe Stock